77. Diets Don't Work, Weight Loss Without Dieting / Camille Martin
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Camille Martin is a registered dietitian, health blogger, and senior technical editor for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. She is also a former chronic dieter who wasted nearly 25 years of her life on a diet. In her book, Love To Lose: Love Your Life and Watch the Weight Lose Itself, she uses what she learned on her own weight-loss journey to help other women stop wasting their lives on a diet, embrace everything about themselves, achieve what they’re truly capable of – and lose weight in the process. Can't wait for you to listen! Sign-up for our newsletter to be with our community! ~ katiekaygraham.com/newsletter
GUEST CONTACT
IG: @camille_martin_rd
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Website: camillemartinrd.com
Book: Love To Lose: Love Your Life and Watch the Weight Lose Itself
Camille Martin 0:00
When you get involved in that, and you start to feel creative, and in that space of like, I'm capable and I'm powerful, the other will start to wilt away, you won't be as focused on your body. Because let's face it dieting and diet culture, you couldn't feel worse about yourself, you know, if all you're focused on is what you look like that's a recipe for an unlived unhappy life.
Katie Kay 0:50
Hey, you guys, and welcome back to another episode of body breaking free. I am your host, Katie Kay. And today we are talking about diet, eating and how it's such a trap and our way out of it, how to reclaim our relationship with food. We have Camille Martin. She is a registered dietician, public health writer and former chronic Dieter dedicated to helping women quit dieting, set bigger and better goals and reclaim their excitement for life and lose weight in the process. So Camille and I talked, a lot of I'll just this whole relationship with food. And as you guys know, I've gotten through the intuitive eating process. And so I kind of weave that into our conversation. But it's great to have somebody's point of view of how they unhooked from the diet culture and how it really changed their life, change their body. And she is amazing in the way that she connects it to tapping into a higher purpose and setting bigger goals rather than our goal of trying to lose weight. And so looking at it from different points of views, and, and I think both of our personal stories around this topic, and hopefully bring some insight into your own relationship with food. And I do want to know, like, we all have a different relationship with food, right, a different process, and how it's going to really help us honor our own body and respect ourselves. And at the root of it, and we talked about this in our conversation, it's, it's all about self belief and self trust, and growing that self worth. And so it's interesting and how it's different for everybody, and how that's so different than the diet mentality, because that is all wrapped around certain rules and restrictions. And so it's like, free yourself of that, right. And if there's just like one minor instance, that you feel like, hey, like this part of my relationship with food could really heal, like explore that and see if you can bring in maybe more trust with yourself and, and your body and your own intuitive signals. Because usually, it's just because we've been cut off from our own signals from our own connection with our body because of these rules and these restrictions. So I just invite you to open up to the possibility for change and, and believing in yourself and, and knowing that as we change and heal our relationship with food, that it will just reflect 100% back into our life. So it's really a process of healing, not only that physical aspect, but the emotional and the spiritual and the mental as well. So it's just like, it's, yeah, it's hard. And it's crazy. And it's beautiful and uplifting. So like all the emotions I feel like and I don't want anything in Camille's and I's conversation to be triggering. So if anything that we say is just not resonating for you, then just throw that bad boy in the trash, right? Like we're talking about our own personal experience, and it could be completely different for you. So just keep that kind of open mind that sense of curiosity and wonder and just see what you know, maybe something will will spark and if you guys have any questions on this topic, I'm here. I know many resources, people and things that can help Camille's here. I'll put all her information in the show notes. So if there's any questions, I know this is a really big topic. So any questions comments, please feel free to reach out to one of us. So without further ado, here is Camille Martin. Okay, Camille, thank you so much for being on body breaking free podcast today.
Camille Martin 4:56
I'm so excited to be here, Katie. Thank you for having me. Yeah, I'm
Katie Kay 5:00
so excited to get into all of it. So Camille is a registered dietician and health blogger, we're going to just dive into this whole topic of dieting and weight loss. However, first, Camille, do, you want to start by just sharing your own personal story and how you started getting into the work you're doing now?
Camille Martin 5:22
Well, I'll try to keep it to the short version. But I'm really in Chile, my whole life led me to this exact moment just like everybody, but I had no intention of becoming a dietician or being anything associated with the health field. But um, I started dieting when I was 12 years old, which is very young and chronic dieted for the next 25 years, I had an eating disorder I was eating emotionally to deal with now I can see looking back to deal with trauma that I had experienced, but I was not making that connection, of course. So I went through all of the feelings of like using foods and non my feelings and to make myself feel better, but then feeling like I was out of control and feeling ashamed of weight that I gained. And so it got me into that cycle, that downward spiral, you know, of eating to make yourself feel better, gaining weight, then drastically dieting and feeling desperate to get rid of it. And I managed to stay in sort of a, I guess, quote, unquote, healthier version of that all the way through high school. But then when I went to college, the wheels came off the bus with, you know, the drinking that goes on and college. So I was binge drinking, binge eating, to make myself feel better to not know how to deal with all of my new environment. And so I came to a place where dieting didn't work for me at all, because I was eating and drinking so much that the only way I could see out of it was to binge and purge, which meant that I developed an eating disorder. And that went on for about three years. So anyway, I met managed to quit doing that, which was wonderful. And then I moved to Atlanta after college, to get my first job. And was just continuing with all of my crazy dieting and extreme eating behaviors, like not eating than eating too much. And I finally reached a point where I just was literally one day on my couch in my little apartment in Atlanta, sobbing and just saying I cannot do this anymore, like the emotional stress and devastation of being obsessed with trying to get the perfect body. And what am I going to eat, how many calories how many fat grams, and, you know, occasionally binging and purging, I couldn't do it anymore. And I realized that if I didn't change something, if I didn't just quit doing all of this insanity. I really was. I didn't know if I was gonna die. But I felt like I was at the end of my rope. So the long and short of it is is that I made a decision that day to quit doing anything to quit monitoring my food, to quit exercising fanatically to quit binging and purging, I wasn't going to restrict myself, I was going to eat whatever I wanted to eat whenever I wanted to eat it, which was huge for someone like me, who was so obsessed with food and what the nutrients were and all of that. And I thought honestly, maybe I'm gonna gain you know, 2030 pounds. But the opposite happened, I would have rather gained 20 pounds and not put myself through that madness than to continue. And the opposite happened. I lost weight. I didn't try to lose weight it came off. But the reason why looking back is that I dropped all of the resistance that I had felt toward my body and toward food. And when all that resistance went away, my urge to self medicate with food was no longer it was no longer necessary because I felt good. So then I started cooking. Then I started reading about nutrition and health. And then eventually, I took a class at a local university in Atlanta after work and I kept going and I became a dietician. And it was like my whole world changed when I just made that one simple decision. You know, forget it. I'm not doing this anymore. And it's not easy to get to that place. It took me about 25 years and I recognize that, you know, it's hard for anyone to say I'm not going to try to diet or lose weight or do anything anymore because we're so afraid that you know our bodies are going to betray us and we're going to, you know, anyway, that's a very long way of saying this is how I got here. But yeah,
Katie Kay 10:03
yeah, I think it's interesting how we kind of have to get to that low point to really react with change, right, it's almost like, we get so fed up with not existing, it's almost like you're not existing as yourself, you're just so mentally, physically emotionally tied up in something. So consuming that we, you get to a point where it's just like, I can't function this way anymore. And I have such a similar story. I remember writing in my notebook, in the middle of the night I woke up, I was just like, I can't do this anymore. I can't do this anymore. I can't. And it's, it's like what you said, it's not like you're gonna die. But at the same time, you don't know how to keep on living that way. So I can relate to that, because it's, you're kind of at the crossroads of like, I could either die because the way of living this way is so painful that I don't want to keep living this way, right? Like I would like either I gotta change, or I really can't live this way anymore. And so sad to think about how debilitating the diet mentality and culture can really grasp hold of us. And I feel like happens to a lot of us that are, you know, perfectionists or, you know, an even like, that has a bad connotation. But even just like people that are trying hard, trying to be good trying to do the quote, unquote, right thing to feel good in the body to look, you know, feel good about how they look. And it just leads us down this path of self destruction. Yeah, and I and I, I loved one thing that you said, I thought was really interesting, as you said, you dropped all the resistance, and that key word resistance? Can you talk a little I know, you talked about it a little bit more. But let's dive into that. Like, what was that? That kind of? Like, what what what was that resistance you were holding on to?
Camille Martin 12:14
Well, the first piece of resistance is I was resisting my body. And any woman or any person who's been on a diet is familiar with that, because that's the state that you're in, just by the sheer fact that you're dieting and trying to get rid of something that's on your body that you don't like, you're by nature, resisting your own body. And when you feel that way, or like sucking in your stomach, or like sitting in a certain way, so that your cellulite doesn't show all of these things that we do to create this tremendous resistance inside of our bodies and resistance toward our bodies from the way that they look. What that does is that when you feel resistance in your body like that, you have to neutralize it. So you know, some people, if you're healthy minded, you can meditate. Or you can go to a yoga class and feel at home in your body and stretch and do all of those wonderful things. But if you are somebody like me, who was eating emotionally in a very unhealthy, destructive, self destructive way, when I felt resistance like that, what I wanted to do to make myself feel better and get rid of that was the only thing that I knew how to do that I trained myself to do which was eat. So you can see then that what this sets up when you're dieting is you're setting yourself up for failure, because dieting creates massive resistance, you're trying to cut carbs cut categories. I'm so sorry, my dog is barking in the background. Dieting sets up all of this massive resistance. And then when you're dieting, you're you're just trying to change your body. Meaning that you hate what you look like. So you're focused on your body in a negative way. You're creating resistance, and then you're neutralizing all of that resistance with food if you eat emotionally, if that makes sense. So, you know, if you use drugs, you're gonna use drugs. If you you know, if you use food, that's what you're gonna do. And then it, it puts you in that negative spiral because you gain weight. And then you have to keep dieting and it just you stay stuck.
Katie Kay 14:31
Totally. Yeah, it totally makes sense. That diet mentality is all wrapped up in the restriction, right? So restricting our food to lose weight. And when we do that, we cut off our own trust with our own body signals. Right. So when we're in this place of oh, I can't have you know, this carbs or whatever I can't have that like bag of chips, and you are really just restricting your own. It's like almost spiritual, it's like you're cutting off your own sense of self, to trust yourself, right and trust your body and trust your own intuitive signals. And there's, I don't know if you've heard of an intuitive eating. But that book is fascinating because they quote a ton of studies that talk about how restriction does the exact opposite of what we want it to do. And then it makes us like, psychopaths and crazy. And we want all the chips, even though we don't actually want like, even though maybe chips aren't your favorite thing and doesn't feel good in your body. But you don't get to know that because the diet culture has created this, like swirl in your brain and you're loving it. So let's say about that. Yeah,
Camille Martin 15:52
that's exactly what happened to me, because I was, you know, normally what I would binge on is like french fries, fried foods. I did like sweets, but it was mostly like, chips and cheeseburgers and all that kind of stuff. So what you just said is right, when I was resisting those foods, like I can't eat this, but then I want it and then I want to eat it. When I let go of all that. And I decided to quit dieting and quit doing anything. You're right, I was finally able to tune in, I thought, well, I can eat whatever I want. Now, I'm just gonna go sit down with a big pizza. But I didn't want it anymore. Because there was no it wasn't. I'd set it up as this thing that I couldn't have and I was trying to stay away from. But then when you are allowed to have it, it's really not that appealing anymore. And therefore I was able to get in touch with the foods that were truly nourishing. I mean, I ate a little bit of stuff like that. But I didn't have this need to like, shovel it in. And then I realized to when I wasn't in that zoned out state of binging, I could actually see how those foods made me feel. And I saw very quickly. They don't make me feel good. I could eat a whole, you know, pint of Ben and Jerry's. And after I'd be like, You know what? This, I feel disgusting. And but before, I was never noticing that, because all I was doing was going straight from binging to shaming myself, and I wasn't getting any objective information that I could use to take to the next, you know, meal or whatever. So yeah, I got very much in tune with what my body needed when I wasn't trying to restrict it. And when I wasn't having all of those crazy making, you know, the scenarios in my head.
Katie Kay 17:33
Yeah. Yeah. Okay, so I have a question for you. So when I change my mindset around food, I was going to a nutritionist, and we were going through the intuitive eating guidelines. So there's multiple principles. And that was really helpful for me because it was kind of this you can eat whatever you want, but also in a container of boundaries of honoring your hunger and releasing any kind of shame or guilt. So like, if I ate a pint of ice cream, I would see the guilt in my head, but I'd be able to, like I'd be able to see it with awareness and then give myself love and be like, Hey, I'm done with this, like whole guilt thing. I've done this before. Anyway, so I had this, like, it felt safer, even though it was scary, right? It was a container that made me feel like I was in control, even though I did still feel out of control, because I wasn't following these rules anymore. So I'm curious Camille, were you just allowing yourself permission to eat anything? And you were your own kind of guide through this? Or was it were you creating your own boundaries through it? How did that process look like?
Camille Martin 18:50
No, I had zero boundaries. I literally said, I'm done with this. I'm going to eat whatever I want whenever I want to eat it. And let's just because I it wasn't like I was trying to come up with some kind of program. I didn't even know what intuitive eating was because this is back in like 1997 and people were really talking about that I just couldn't take it anymore. And I was like, I'm just gonna eat, I'm just gonna be is how I really felt like if I don't want to get up and go on a five mile dead sprint around Atlanta. I mean, that's the kind of stuff I was doing. It was very extreme. So I just took all that pressure off. And really what happened was, is that my comfort foods, I would eat them but I was so relaxed and like peaceful that I was not restricting myself and creating all of this drama in my head that I was able to eat slowly and I just wasn't like manic anymore. I wasn't doing dead sprints. I wasn't gorging on food or all or nothing behaviors that really contributed to my binge eating and binge drinking. So when I felt relaxed and peace spool, I just didn't eat as much. And then that's when I was able to start gathering all this really great information like, wow, I don't really feel good when I do this, and I never cooked before, which is, I think, an important piece of it. Because once I started investigating about my health and about nutrients, I would just go to Barnes and Noble and buy a book and read it. And I got really interested in it. And so I decided, you know, I need to learn how to cook a little bit. So I would just, I didn't know how to cook anything. I mean, it was literally Lean Cuisines and diet, Dr. Pepper was all that was in my refrigerator freezer. But when I started cooking it just open, I felt open and relaxed, and like just sort of like taking baby steps into a whole new world. And I don't know, I just I wasn't trying to eat intuitively, it just happened naturally, because I wasn't restricting myself. That's really all it was. But now do I still sit down and eat ice cream? I just went to lunch with my daughter and I had a you know, I had a salad. She wanted dessert. And I said, you know, I was like, well, let's get this one. I'll have a bite. I don't want that one. I said, Okay, well, I'll get mine and I half of it. And it was like this is I'm having lunch with my daughter. It's fun to do I have a six pack abs? Do I have perfectly toned arms? Absolutely NOT do I feel good in my body? Now, at 53 years old, I finally feel happy in my body. And it's just, you will make yourself totally insane. And I mean this, there's so many conversations at once we could be talking about but like the all of the media messages, the social media feeds people who have these perfect bodies, quote unquote, perfect bodies. It's just, you're never gonna be happy, no matter. I mean, I don't know. It's just like, don't you want to just live and like, cook and how, you know, eat some carbs. If you feel whatever feels good to you. I mean, for me is what I say to people, and then you eat, eat what you want, but just start paying attention to how it makes you feel. And then you might end up I became a vegetarian by accident. You know, I used to be a junk food junkie, and not a green inside. And now I mean, I've never eat fast food. I don't know, like, it's an evolution. It's a process, you know?
Katie Kay 22:30
Right. Right. And like you said, there's just so many different ways we could bring this conversation because there's just so much here. It's crazy, like one topic about eating is just like radiates, and just so much, which I think goes to the magnitude of it to like somebody that wants to reclaim their relationship with food. It's not just a quick, you know, in one day, you're gonna figure it out, it's all of these little things can be addressed, which can sound intimidating, but it's also maybe a little validating to be like, Wow, this is, you know, it is a big thing to put my commitment and to really changing my relationship with food. Yeah. And also, it's such a great opportunity. Because if you think about it, I mean, we see this over and over again, it's like, once you start to really reclaim your relationship with food, and give yourself that love and healing it reflects out into your life. So you see that, if you're willing to step forward and really do this work, you're going to see your life really become uplifted, and all of these external things will start to change. So I like to kind of say that and make that point because it is really intimidating and scary and hard. But it's also such a great opportunity. And I also heard somebody I love this the other day talking about how pain, we look at our pain, and we look at our struggles. And we think all clashed it gets so hard, like when we're in that like sticky place and we're like having a really bad week or like for me it lasts like multiple months. And it's just like, Man, I just want to get out of this. Well, there's growth happens on the other side of pain, right? When you think about whenever we've gone through pain. Well, what's on the other side is expansive growth in our life and change. So I now I'm always shifting my perspective on when I'm in a painful place or when I'm trying to work through something or when I'm healing, you know, my relationship with food or my body or whatever. It's like, oh, it's uncomfortable and not great. And I'm not feeling good everyday. But on the other side, it's like, Whoa, yeah, much expansion has happened, right? It's like, oh my gosh, I never like would have shown up for my life in this way. If I hadn't put in the work to go through that pain. Sometimes we don't have a choice. Sometimes life just like throws it out. This, right, we're like, alright, well, I guess I just have to go through it. Yeah. But yeah, like, there's a lot there. Any comments, Camille?
Camille Martin 25:09
Yeah, it's so true. And I think one of the things that prevents us from actually adopting that mindset of growth and change is that we're so engrained into the dieting mindset, which is, you know, bust your ass for 30 days, and then your life's gonna be better lose the weight, then it's, it's this very short term narrow perspective that we've learned how to develop because of the dieting mindset. And if you can get to a place where you can just drop, if you can just say, eff this, I'm not dieting anymore, I'm just not going to do it anymore. And then you commit to saying, I'm going to start today on the journey of my life, and I'm going to take a baby step today, it just takes all that pressure off. And even if your baby step is, I'm gonna walk my dogs around the block, and just breathe and be and think about what do I really want for my life? I mean, it's not just about food in your body, it's about who are you? Who do you want to be as a woman? Who do you want to? What do you want from your life? You're not just here to serve other people, what do you want for yourself, but I love the quote that says, a year from now, you'll wish you had started today. I love that because it's like we get so locked into, well, if I can just find the diet that will help me lose the 20 pounds, then it's like, we're just trying to find this thing. There is no thing there isn't that diets don't work, not one of them works. And that's because of their structure. It's not because of what they're telling you what to eat or not to eat. They're based on resistance, resisting your body resisting food, you don't learn anything, you never change your habits. So if you can just drop all of that, and start today, a year from now a year and know where you will be you have no, you can't even imagine, if you had told me that I was going to be working in the marketing department at Turner Broadcasting, that by quitting dieting, I was going to become a dietician and write a book. And I mean, I never would have believed it, you know. So it's not just about food and your body just make a commitment to learn and grow. And you can't do that. As long as you're looking outside of yourself for a solution. In other words, a diet, no personal trainers going to change your life, no diet is going to change your life, I'm not going to change your life, just because I'm a dietitian. And I may know more about you more than you do scientifically about food, you can go learn it on your own, no one's going to change your life for you. But you and weight has nothing to do with that.
Katie Kay 27:55
Well, I love everything that you just said. And let's talk a little bit about your clients and what you see. And that kind of initial, because I think that's the hardest part is that initial unhooking from the diet culture. And I remember for me, it did have a lot to do with realizing my values and my purpose. And, you know, why am I wanting to lose weight and the purpose in the values really helped me to put it in perspective. And then also, I realized that this model, I was trying to fit in this ideal, you know, whatever ideal weight I had in my head, that I wasn't honoring my body, right. And that it was, it was the 1% of the 1% I was trying to look like and I thought it was so silly once I realized, why am I trying to look like everybody else? Like, is that my purpose? Like, do I want to fit this mold because I want to be the same as everybody else. And I just it totally blew like the cap off because I was like Wow, I like really want to live in my purpose. I really want to be unique. I really want to be healthy and my body and the way I was eating these diet foods and restricting and stuff and over exercising and consuming all my time and energy and like my one exercise class that was like my day revolved around my exercise. So it was putting it on perspective and being like how can I like honor my body like via this weight that is be at a weight that is my natural like Katie my natural body, right and that's the way I can honor and respect it. And also free up my like spiritual essence and living my purpose of value. So that was like two very huge things for me to start and be like, hey, I can do this I can unhook because I now have my why. What do you use? Camille and your clients, how do you see them unhooking from that diet mentality that just start this process?
Camille Martin 30:07
Well, it's interesting. And I hate to say this, but honestly, I don't do private counseling anymore because the media messages and social media, the regular media, our entire cultural brainwashing really, that women are subjected to about getting this perfect body or losing weight is so ingrained and so pervasive that I was doing private counseling and people were on board with what I was saying, and like, I don't quit dieting, but then I would always circle back to some version of, okay, tell me what to eat. Give me the plan that's going to help me lose the weight. And I would say, I'm not going to tell you would see. And the biggest reason why is because I want you to learn how to eat on your own. This is why diets don't work for one reason is because if I tell you Katie, if you came to me and you were my client and I, and you said give me the meal plan for the next two weeks, that's gonna help me get rid of five to seven pounds. Okay, I don't know where you live. I don't know what if you work for a living or if you're a stay at home mom, I don't know what your food preferences are. I cannot come up with the perfect plan and even if I did, and you lost five to seven pounds, it's gonna come back because you are not changing your habits. So I stopped after a while because not because people just don't get it but because I feel like that my message is better received from afar almost like to let it sink in over time like for people to come to my blog and read what I'm writing to just start it's not something like you said and unhooking. It's not a simple unhooking because we are really brainwashed, and it will, it'll never leave me. I mean, I'm 53 I wake up every morning, and honestly, the very first thought was is what did I eat yesterday. And then it's like, I mean, I still struggle with it, because it's so ingrained, but um, you just have to learn how to, it's not learning, you have to just inundate yourself with information, like what you're doing podcasts, people who have wonderful podcasts that talk about these things, like you, or read, you know, people's blogs, and try to just absorb these ideas that because you're gonna get all the opposite messages anywhere you look. So it's just up to you to be deliberate about what you will allow to filter into your mind. So what I do, the biggest piece of what I do to help people is to teach them to set a big goal that doesn't have anything to do with your weight are what you look like, and to switch your mindset off of what you look like. And there's something that's inspiring that, that you could do that you could go out and achieve. I feel like a lot of women, especially if you are a mom, you've got a family to take care of. And maybe you don't have a job and your whole day is filled up with like taking care of other people. If you have a goal that's uniquely yours, that's like start a business or go climb a mountain or go take a trip or speak a language. When you get involved in that and you start to feel creative. And in that space of like I'm capable and I'm powerful, the other will start to wilt away, you won't be as focused on your body. Because let's face it dieting and diet culture, you couldn't feel worse about yourself, you know? And if all you're focused on is what you look like, that's a recipe for an unlived unhappy life.
Katie Kay 33:56
Yeah, yeah, it, it's kind of like it all boils down to what I've realized going through, I mean, the podcasts and listening to all these amazing people and also in my own journey. It all boils down to self like, I mean, you can call it self esteem, self worth, believing in yourself Self Love, like it comes down to that connection and trust. And what you said when you see your clients, it's like, man, it's like so simple, but yet, we're so bombarded with external circumstances and results in programming like the mind like we've already kind of created this program of the way things are and you know, stuck in this place. But I do think there's so much possibility and I love how you direct your your clients and through your book and And what you teach is that setting that goal because it's, you know, it brings us back into what do I want, and then you start to build that self trust from that point, right? There's like, multiple avenues. Like, for me, I love teaching somatic healing, like, like breath work, you know, you are able to get out of the thinking mind, like the prefrontal cortex, and you tap into that essence of self and like, the more that you're able to tap into, that you the more you trust it, right, the more you believe in yourself, and it like radiates outward to everything. So it's, it is interesting that it's about the food, but it's also not about the food at all. And so it's like, it's fascinating to me that you've taken that approach of, okay, I can't find the inlet here directly through the food relationship. But let's look at maybe setting some goals. Like that's really interesting to me to like, see that? And, and so do you talk about this, Camille, in your book that you wrote? Or how does that integrate? And then also, you talk about your blog? Yeah. Oh, yeah,
Camille Martin 36:11
I talk extensively about it on my blog. And in my book, the book is about changing habits. As I said earlier, when you go on a diet, you're not changing anything that you do on a regular basis. So when you get back to your regular life, you're, you know, nothing has changed. So my book is about changing habits and changing the way that you think. And those two actually feed off each other off each other in a really positive cycle. But yeah, I lay out a step by step plan for setting and achieving a big goal, especially if you've never done it before. I mean, it's it's not second nature to a lot of people. So there is a process of doing that. But yeah, my blog, I mean, probably every other blog post I write is about setting a big goal. I'm sure my my subscribers, thinking hearing me talk about it, but it's so important. It really is.
Katie Kay 37:05
Yeah, yeah. And how do you think that dieting is linked to that part of self esteem and self trust? Does that almost hijack it from us? Is that the relationship so then we can, once we release? Yeah, talk about that correlation? Because I'm trying to think like, once we release that from the dieting, then we get our self esteem back in, like, towards goals or towards purpose? Yeah,
Camille Martin 37:35
exactly. Well, dieting wrecks your self esteem, because when you go on a diet, you're really buying into what they're selling you like, this is the one that works, and then you get all excited, and it's like, Okay, this time, I'm gonna stick to it, this time, I'm gonna have willpower, I'm not gonna fail, I'm not going to cheat. And then, because diets are all built on this massive resistance, and willpower runs out, and then if you're eating emotionally, you're going to cheat, whatever. But what happens is, is that when you fail on a diet, you blame yourself, you don't blame the diet, they all look different. So you're thinking, well, it's got to be made, but it's not. So when you're blaming yourself for failing, and then you keep doing it over and over and over again, your self esteem just gets chipped away at over time. And before you know it, you're 30 like I was, I'd never set any big goals really, I felt like a total failure. I mean, I had a job and I felt good about, you know, the work I was doing and I had a great life and friends, but I'd never felt I was always so focused on trying to get the perfect body first, and then get to do all these great things. You know, like you feel like I gotta lose weight first, like I want to go do take this big trip but let me lose 10 pounds before I do so. Not only do you wreck your self esteem while the failures you're actively holding yourself back from really living because it's like we don't feel like we're allowed to take part in life or society until we look a certain way so when you stop dieting that goes away and then you combine that with actively setting a goal and and working toward it and when you do it and baby steps, you start getting these small wins and this big momentum of like wow, you know, I'm I'm really doing this and I feel it's confidence building and um, yeah, so it all goes hand in hand.
Katie Kay 39:33
Yeah. Okay, so one thing I when you were talking one thing I caught onto is that diet mentality of the like, I'm gonna start this new diet and then like you like lose it right? And then you whatever fail and like we don't have to go through the whole process because I'm sure many of us already know what that whole experience is like, but then you start up a diet again. What I also have seen is the Eat the wellness culture mindset that isn't wrapped up maybe in that, like, what do you kind of call it like our typical kind of stereotype diet mentality. But there's also this like wellness culture that is also hijacking our own sense of self and trust with our body that is still like these rules that we're still need to follow. And so I will always want to bring that up. Because I think we all know, like, we can all kind of be like, hey, like, is my relationship with food? where I want it to be at? Like, do I have the energy? Like, am I feeling good in my body? When I eat? Like, do I kind of know, like, in the present moment, because it changes, right? Like, what kind of foods are going to be satisfying? And if not, like, if not like, it's good to kind of look at maybe some of these rules or restrictions that diet culture, or sorry, wellness culture is bringing in. And so there's all these tricky ways to separate us and disconnect us from our body. And it's so like, so I think like most of us kind of think about the diet culture is what you talked about, Camille is like that, you go on a diet, and then you fail, and then you start new, and you're like, oh, my gosh, is amazing. And then you know, you fail, and you're like, on this hamster wheel. But there's so many ways that the industry really cuts us off from our own somatic experience. And I have been doing this group, this 12 week group meeting for intuitive eating. And it's been really cool to kind of see and go through each step and have the intuitive eating process and see the ways that were cut off. And when I first went into the group, I was really thinking, oh, like I'm, you know, have this really healthy relationship with food. Like there's a few things that like my energy levels and things that I feel a little disconnected. But then it was really fascinating to see how much I was still holding on to a lot of these wellness diet, like sneaky ways of the industry, cutting us off from our own body. And so I just invite the listeners to kind of see that and notice, like, oh, what kind of rules Am I following? Also, like routine, like we eat? Like, if we eat the same thing for lunch every day? Are we really listening to the body? Like in that present moment? Are we there? Like noticing what kind of foods are going to make us feel good in that moment? I mean, it's, it sounds so complicated, and it is but it's not right. It's present moment awareness. And once you know these concepts like it is like they're already ingrained, right? Like we have that neuroplasticity, so we already like start to shift and change. Um, gosh, I could talk about this all day. Do you have any comments?
Camille Martin 43:05
Oh, my God, I wish I had a pen like you do? I should have been making this because I have so many like things. Um, well. So first of all, the wellness industry. I mean, I think everyone's heart is in the right place for the most part. But from my perspective, I don't know if you're familiar with the term orthorexia. It's like this obsessive focus on being perfectly eating the perfect diet or eating clean and all of these things. And I think what that does, like you said, it cuts us off from Ai. Anytime someone's telling you what to eat, you're cut off because you're not you're not making a decision on your own. You're not You're not living in your own power to find these things out. That's exactly how I ended up becoming a dietitian. I wanted to know like, well, is this bad for me? Is this good for me? What's the deal? Let me just look it up. But yeah, so there's that and then oh, gosh, I wish I had written it down. I just feel like what you're you were right when you say it's we're making it so much harder than it needs to be. If you think about it if there was no media and there were no people in your ear all the time telling you carbs are bad carbs are good eat this don't eat that. What would you do you would have no choice but then it just go and start eating foods and notice how they make you feel we're not noticing anything we're not living in a place of awareness. Furthermore, we do have the added you know, the problem of always being distracted and being connected to devices. I mean, I get up every morning and from the moment I my feet hit the floor I'm you know the kids the job doing this doing that running the carpool line and all of this and you know, ever Everybody's got their own chaotic life, it's really hard to eat intuitively when you're on the go, and then you're just grabbing something because you're hungry. A lot of people don't even know that they're actually like, what is true hunger. We don't sit outside and nature we're, as it sounds like, oh my god, there's no way to win. But really, it is simple. The only way to conquer all of this for yourself is to use your own common sense and judgment. Well, we've made this like, unbelievably complicated thing about food. So I always like to use the example. Speaking of orthorexia, if I have a beautiful sports car, like it's top of the line, and then I fill it with the most fantastic like top of the line fuel. But I leave my car parked in my driveway, and I don't go anywhere. What difference does it make you know what I mean? Like, you can eat perfectly, you can have a beautiful bikini beach body, but what the hell are you doing with your life like is that all we want is to eat clean, and have a bikini body and then just, you know, get on social media and post a bunch of frickin pictures like I want to live. And I want women to start living and start saying, you know, like, I'm here for a purpose. I'm here for a reason. And this is not what it is, is to sit around trying to figure out how many carbs I ate, or try not to sit down at the end of the day enlightened to a thing of Ben and Jerry's, like that is not a life. So that's the place I want to come from is figure out what you want out of your life. Like Own Your Power to choose, and to learn and figure it out for yourself. Because you can the information is out there. And I'm willing to help anyone who wants to, you know, to learn for herself or to it's just, it's not all about food. It's not just about learning about food, it's about learning about what you want for yourself out of your life. So if anyone out there is listening, email me, I'm happy to just whatever, we'll break it down. Yeah, I just want everyone to get that message that your life is bigger than what you're making it.
Katie Kay 47:14
Yeah, yeah. And coming up all your information in the show notes so people can email you, and I'll put your book and contact information. So yeah, people can reach out to you if it's resonating. And I And yeah, I want to, like also put a nail on that, that it is very uplifting and positive and that it does become easy, right? I think that's one thing. I mean, our conversation and we just like dive into all these like nitty gritty parts of it, which can feel overwhelming. But there hasn't been a time in my life where I have felt like so much freedom. I think that's probably the word that I I would use around food. And I would almost say it's like coming, it's going from freedom to love, which I haven't like, found, like, full essence of love around food yet, but I'm moving my way there. And yeah, and I and I mean, it's always like the healing process is always going to have ups and downs, rain, but I think it's a big sigh of relief. Like if I would have heard myself say that 10 years ago, I would have been like, there's no way I would ever feel freedom around food, right? It will always be on my mind. And I'll always be thinking like, oh, what's my next meal? And how am I gonna plan it and what are like all these things? And also, I want to say probably the majority of the listeners already know, like a ton about nutrition like that's one thing I think we see with dieters. Chronic dieters is like you already know, like the macros and like, quote, unquote, what you should be eating, like, you're not going to lose all of that knowledge. Like it's knowledge, right? It's good to have, but you aren't going to totally just be in like, like a pool of water without any life. floaty, right? And you're just going to like totally lose yourself. I think that's a huge fear is like, when you start to learn and trust your body, you're just gonna be like, Oh my gosh, I'm like totally out of control. I don't have any, like, I don't know what to eat. Right? So it's like I just want to encourage the listeners to be like, you know, like you already know like, all you need to do is just bluster. Yeah, and trust yourself, right? It's just like, and it's such a gorgeous journey and I've just like I've learned so much through it and I'm so glad Camille that you're you're putting your content out here even if you're like I mean it doesn't matter, right what form like whether it's like you're talking one on one to clients or if you're, you know, blogging and doing podcasts like all of it is such a light because We need that right? We need the conversation here. To, like counteract the diet, culture conversation, we just need, we need all of it, right? We need all of it in the pool so that people can feel like they have a choice. Like that's the most important thing, right? Like we, we all we can choose to be like on a diet, we can choose to be in the diet culture, we can choose to like our purpose to be how we look like, that's fine. If that's like what you want, like, that's great. But then you just know you have a choice. Like you can do that. Or you can do something different. And just like believing that, that you have your own choice around bit.
Camille Martin 50:40
That's important. I think that's a great distinction to make. Because some of us don't do feel like that we, you know, we're stuck with this body and I want to change it, I need to get rid of this weight. And there's only one way to do it. And that's to go on a crash diet. And that's just not true. Yeah.
Katie Kay 50:55
Yeah. Beautiful. I love that. Camille, last question before I let you go. Can you tell us your own daily wellness routine? I love to ask the guests just give us inspiration.
Camille Martin 51:08
Oh, yeah, well, it's funny, I just wrote a blog post about this my wellness routine, I'll tell you, it has very little to do even though I'm a very Yes, now I'm a very healthy person. I'm a healthy eater, I do all of the typical things that you would think that I do exercise, drink water, take vitamins, whatever. But my wellness routine consists of getting up an hour before anybody else in my house is up or before I even have a workout and I start my day with reading something inspiring to set the course of my day, I used to roll out of the bed, turn on the TV, watch the Today Show and see about all the negative stuff that was going on in the world. And it makes a tremendous difference to get up and set your mindset on the right path and then to set your intention and decide like what are the three most important things that I have to get done today? Because I have 20 of them. And you're not going to do all of them Taipei you're gonna do three and you're going to be okay with that. Yeah, I mean, it's really getting up early and definitely exercising is a huge piece of it. I would rather people I guess, I mean, not to be black or white. But I would rather people start an exercise program than if they're not doing anything at all. Even if it's walking in the movement, moving your body is so important for your confidence. So I would rather you not eat all the right foods and never exercise I'd rather you instead of eating all the right foods and never moving I would rather you start moving and um, and get that going first. But yeah, it's really setting my intention for the day. What else do I do for my health routine, I play with my little dogs who are just being so terrible. barking in the hallway through the Yeah, and hanging out with my daughters and just try to talk to people who make me feel good. I I try not to have people in my life who are negative and bring me down. And that's hard, too. But yeah, I try to just make my mindset as positive and healthy and as loving toward myself as I possibly can be. And that helps all the other actions fall into place naturally.
Katie Kay 53:26
Beautiful, beautiful. Thank you so much Gmail for being here. And like I said, I'll put all your contact information in the show notes. Is there one place that you would direct our listeners to to contact you?
Camille Martin 53:39
Yeah, my website Camille Martin rd.com. And thank you for putting all of that in your show notes. So appreciate it. And um, yeah, anyone who wants to reach out I love. I love talking to people emailing. I'm here for anyone who needs me.
Katie Kay 53:55
Awesome. Thank you so much. And thank you so much listeners for showing up. Taking care of yourself, your mind your body. I will see you all next week. If you have made it to the end of this episode, and you want more, more wellness tools, practices and insights from this episode and others, make sure to sign up for our email list. This is where we connect and support our body breaking free community. So if you're ready for the next step, the link to sign up will be in the show notes at Katie Kay graham.com forward slash newsletter.
